Description
The long range filling the north side of Lal Dighi, built in 1777 to house the Company’s junior civil servants (its “writers”) and now the administrative machine of the Bengal Presidency. Revenue, judicial, marine and political departments, each with its own records and its own clerks.
Everything the Company has ever been told is in this building. Whether anyone can find it is a different question.
Notable Features
- The filed and forgotten. Roy’s 1812 letter to the Collector is here, stamped RECD 14 FEB 1812 and annotated “Filed. No action required.” in a clerk’s hand.
- The Collector’s district records for the Twenty-Four Pergunnahs, including Baranagar.
- Access is by standing, not by fee. Freddy’s Board of Control paper works. So does a word from Ashworth, which is a favour with a cost.
- Clerks are the real gate. A helpful one saves a week. An obstructive one is unanswerable.
The Senses
- Smell. Dry paper, sealing wax, ink, and the mildew that gets into everything bound in this climate.
- Sound. A hundred pens, punkah ropes, and the flat drone of a place where nobody speaks above a murmur.
- Colour. Whitewash gone yellow, red tape (literally, the Company’s own), and brown paper tied in bundles to the ceiling.
Connections
In Play
Chapter 4, Session 11 (11 October 1814) — the audit that broke the case open. Freddy used his East India Company Board of Control auditing authority here, with Edmund Courtney’s cooperation, to pull the GoDown Syndicate’s ledgers. Digging through stacks bound in literal red tape, he found a 1791 charitable subscription to the Temple at Baranagar — predating Surlish’s involvement by over twenty years — and a decades-long pattern of the syndicate absorbing absentee European families’ capital, each one proposed to the partners by the syndicate’s registrar, Ramkanta Sett. This was the session’s central investigative breakthrough. See By Command of His Excellency.
Appearances
Connections
People
Location of
- Edmund Courtney NPC neutralRevenue department2 sessions, The Magistrate's Table to By Command of His Excellency
Visited by
- Freddy Cavendish Player character neutralUsed his Board of Control authority to pull the GoDown Syndicate's ledgers (11 October 1814)2 sessions, The Magistrate's Table to By Command of His Excellency
Places
Borders
- Lal Dighi Location neutralFills the north side of the square
Part of
- Lal Dighi Location neutralFills the north side of Tank Square
Organisations
Headquarters of
- East India Company Faction neutralThe Bengal civil establishment's offices and records fill the north side of Tank Square1 session: The Magistrate's Table